


The Escort of the Grave

by firecat



Category: American Gods - Neil Gaiman
Genre: Alison McGovern (briefly), Cŵn Annŵn, Death Magic, Fae & Fairies, Folklore, Gen, Lakeside (town), Laura Moon (briefly) - Freeform, Mr. Wednesday (briefly), Murder, Odin - Freeform, Prophetic Visions, Ravens, Twelfth Night (holiday), Wild Hunt, child sacrifice, hounds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-24
Updated: 2020-10-24
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:00:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27171442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firecat/pseuds/firecat
Summary: Between jobs for Mr Wednesday, Shadow is living in a small town called Lakeside. On Twelfth Night, he encounters a pair of gods he hasn't met before. They are hunting for answers to a long-standing mystery.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 10
Collections: Trick or Treat Exchange 2020





	The Escort of the Grave

**Author's Note:**

  * For [firstlovelatespring](https://archiveofourown.org/users/firstlovelatespring/gifts).



When Shadow slept, in his apartment by the lake, he slept well. But he woke often, and when he lay waking in his narrow bed, trying to stay warm, sometimes he heard things out on the frozen water. 

He heard human and animal cries. Children, crying out “no!” and “I’m afraid!” and “Please!” and harsh adult voices answering them, and screams. Hounds baying, but deeper than any hound he’d heard before. Sometimes the baying was loud and sometimes soft, and Shadow felt inexplicably more nervous when it was soft, as if some great beast were padding over his grave. 

He heard whinnying and the creak of horse tackle. The clashing of metal upon metal, as if swords were striking shields. War cries, shouts. 

Sometimes these sounds would drive him to the window, but he couldn’t see clearly because of the insulating layer of plastic. He occasionally imagined he saw shapes, beasts with white bodies, riders in some darker color, unnamable because the moonlight turned all colors to gray, but Shadow could not help thinking of red. 

Once he was so curious he made it all the way outside, wrapped in as many layers as he could manage. The moon glittered on the icy surface of the lake, and, as he had half-expected, no one and nothing was there, except the klunker of a car that would mark the changing of the season by falling into the lake. Perhaps he’d heard only the creak of the ice, still thickening now, and had overinterpreted it as a pack of dogs and hunters, searching for lost souls and their murderers. It certainly would be of a piece with the insane nonsense his employer had put him through, before dropping him at Lakeside.

~~~

Shadow had never paid much attention to the Christian religious calendar, apart from the days one had to remember that shops and restaurants were closed. But in town that day, it seemed everyone was talking about Twelfth Night. 

“Have you put away your holiday decorations yet? It’s bad luck to leave them up past Twelfth Night, you know,” said the waitress at Mabel’s, refilling his coffee as he worked his way through a pastie.

“I only just came to town, so I didn’t have any,” Shadow said apologetically. “What is Twelfth Night, anyway? I’m a heathen.” 

The waitress wasn’t busy, so she sat across from him in the booth, setting the coffee pot on the table. “The end of the Twelve Days of Christmas. The eve of the Epiphany.”

“That only leaves me with more questions,” Shadow said, beginning to regret he’d asked. But she smiled, apparently happy to talk about it.

“The Days of Christmas are the first twelve days of Jesus’s life on Earth.”

 _“Lucky, lucky guy,”_ Shadow remembered Jacquel, of Ibis & Jacquel Funeral Parlor, saying of Jesus. Fine, if you think being hung on a piece of wood for three days until you asphyxiated counted as lucky. Even if you did come back to life, it didn’t sound at all nice.

“The Epiphany is the day that Jesus’s divinity is revealed to the world,” she went on. Shadow noticed the chain around her neck. A small cross hung at the end of it, just kissing the top of her cleavage. 

“I see.” Shadow thought of his own personal epiphany, back in the House on the Rock, riding the carousel. Mr Wednesday’s voice had been even rougher than usual. 

> “I told you I would tell you my names. This is what they call me. I am called Glad-of-War, Grim, Raider, and Third. I am One-eyed. I am called Highest, and True-Guesser. I am Grimnir, and I am the Hooded One. I am All-Father, and I am Gondlir Wand-bearer. I have as many names as there are winds, as many titles as there are ways to die.”

And he had been told, by something as deep as the earth itself, _“Believe everything.”_

Was he now to experience another theophany? 

“It’s Twelfth Night,” said the cashier at Dave’s Finest Foods, where Shadow stopped next. “Take a slice of cake.”

“Is this a special cake?” Shadow asked. 

“One piece has a bean hidden in it. Whoever finds it in their slice is royalty for the day,” he explained. “Do you want to eat it now?”

“How about if I wait until a day when it would be especially useful to be a king?” Shadow asked him.

“I don’t know. Most people just eat it right away. If you get the bean, you get this Twelfth Night gift basket.” The cashier description pointed to a metal five gallon bucket further along the counter. It had “Hennings Farm & Home Supplies” stenciled on it. 

Shadow ate the piece of cake, and found a bean in it.

“Lucky you!” said the cashier, handing Shadow the bucket. 

_I hope I’m luckier than Jesus,_ thought Shadow.

Shadow started to pry the lid off the bucket, but the cashier stopped him. “No, open it when you’re where you’re going to be for the rest of the night.”

“All right. Thank you.”

“Also, if you’re going to be sleeping at home tonight, you should chalk your door,” he said, handing Shadow a piece of chalk.

“Really? How come?”

“For protection,” he said. 

“From what?”

The cashier smile and shrugged. “Gods? Devils? Fairies? Evil spirits? Take your pick.” 

“What do you chalk onto the door?” Shadow asked next.

“The initials of the Magi, or whatever makes you feel protected, I suppose.”

Shadow imagined writing “Huginn and Muninn, keep the fuck out” on his door.

Henning’s Farm and Home Supplies was Shadow’s third stop of the day. Upon learning he would be joining no festivities that night, the proprietor handed him a stoppered jug of liquid.

“What’s this?”

“Wassail punch. Traditional for Twelfth Night. Be sure to save the last bowl for whatever gods may visit you tonight.” 

_Oh dear. More visiting gods?_ thought Shadow. He unstoppered the jug. He smelled apple cider, spices, and an undernote he couldn’t identify. 

“Thank you,” he said. “Between this and the chalk and the cake, I’m well set up for a safe and festive party-of-one.” 

“It’s a _good_ town,” Henning said.

~~~

Back in his apartment, Shadow took the lid off the bucket. Inside he found a paper crown, which he put on. 

He also found some frozen steaks, a chocolate orange, cinnamon sticks, a bag of oats, and several children’s toys that looked as if they had been well loved. 

Shadow started emptying the pockets of his parka, and he found the chalk. _Might as well get into the spirit of it,_ he thought to himself. He stepped outside and began scribbling with the chalk on the door, without anything specific in mind. When he felt done, he stepped back. He’d drawn a white wolf. He’d filled in the body and head, but the ears were done in outline, and the red color of the door showed through.

Shadow thawed and cooked one of the steaks, and ate it with a mug of the wassail.

He unwrapped and whacked the chocolate orange, because that’s what the foil covering said to do, and it neatly broke apart into segments. He put one of the segments into his mouth and let it melt there. It tasted good combined with the punch. 

He picked up one of the books he’d taken out of the Lakeside Library, _An Encyclopedia of Myths and Superstitions,_ and turned to the section on ravens.

> **Mythological Significance:** Ravens have a mixed reputation. They are harbingers of war, death, and disease. They are attracted to bodies that died unnaturally, such as murder victims or those slain in war. 
> 
> However, ravens are also seen as protective. It is said that if the ravens ever abandon the Tower of London, the monarchy will fall.
> 
> **Superstitions:** Ravens are said to hunt with wolves. Therefore, to ward off ravens, place the toebone of a wolf and a raven feather on your doorsill.

Shadow put the book down. His problems with ravens were bigger than the toebone of a wolf and a feather could handle.

He began practicing his coin tricks, continuing to drink the punch, which produced a pleasant buzz without making him feel drunk. Unlike with other alcohol he’d drunk, though, it gradually began tasting worse — the off note he couldn’t identify got stronger, and the sweet-tart spicy cider flavor faded. He poured the final serving into a bowl, thinking to see if there was something odd in the dregs. 

He didn’t see anything solid, but he was surprised to find the remaining liquid was red and thick, like blood.

That was when he heard the baying start. 

It was like the sounds he’d heard in his dreams, or on those nights when he lay in bed, not sure if he was asleep or awake. At first it sounded very loud, and as he listened it got fainter and fainter. And then he heard whinnying and jingling below, followed by stomping and scraping and skittering up the stairs to his front door. 

He saw the doorknob turning — even though he _knew_ he had locked it. He should hide, look for a weapon, _something._ But he was frozen, as if his feet were trapped in ice, just like the stag trapped in lake ice in Hinzelmann’s story. 

The door opened and they entered. 

Two creatures. 

One was shaped like a human, dressed in layers of white furs. He had to crouch and turn sideways to enter the apartment, because his head was crowned with the most magnificent set of antlers Shadow had ever seen — a great, spiked, U-shaped crown, as wide as he was tall. On his back he carried a great bow and quiver.

His ears were pointed upward, the outer corners of his eyes pointed downward, and his face was blackened, as if he’d walked through a smoking fire. Masses of wavy yellow hair burst out around his ermine-trimmed hood, framing his face. The banked ember glow of his eyes was unavoidable. 

The other was a hound, but what a hound. Slender, long-muzzled, pure white with bloodred ears. Her head came up to Shadow’s chest. Her eyes fastened on Shadow with an intelligence that looked deeply strange— _wrong_ —on a dog’s face. 

Shadow could hear the scuffling and whuffing of other dogs outside, and what he thought was the stamp of a horse down below. 

Shadow was even more gobsmacked when the stag man bowed to him, and the hound dipped onto her forelegs, also in a sort of bow. 

“We greet you, King,” the antlered man said, and his voice sounded like it came from the bowels of the earth. “And I thank you for the invitation into your realm.” 

“Be welcome,” Shadow said, because what else can you say to someone with bloody great stakes all over his head, and a hound who could have your head clean off in one bite? “Make yourself comfortable. May I offer you some...steak? Wassail? There’s not much left of that, though. I’m called Shadow, by the way.”

The stag man seated himself at Shadow’s small kitchen table. “King Shadow, I am Gwyn ap Nudd, King of the Tylwyth Teg, Ruler of Annwn, and Master of the Wild Hunt, at your service. And this is Mallt-y-Nos, the queen of the Cŵn Annwn, in one of her guises.” 

“Well met,” said Shadow, hoping his phrase-book RenFaire dialect would come across as the right sort of polite to these deities. “I am no king, though. I just got the piece of cake with the bean in it, and this paper crown was one of the prizes.”

Gwyn ap Nudd and Mallt-y-Nos exchanged glances. Then Mallt-y-Nos’s gaze turned toward the bowl of what was originally wassail, but now more resembled blood. 

Shadow pushed the bowl toward her, and she lapped daintily (if a dog might be said to drink daintily) until it was empty, then thoroughly cleaned her bloody fangs with her tongue, her mouth open in a canine smile of contentment. 

“Steak?” Shadow said to Gwyn ap Nudd. 

“I would gladly accept on behalf of my other hounds. Hunting is hungry work.”

“Oh, and I got some oats, too.” Shadow pulled the bucket toward him and rummaged in it. 

Gwyn and Mallt-y-Nos shifted uncomfortably.

Shadow’s hand fell on one of the children’s toys. He took it out: a wooden train car, blue, with “Baltimore and Ohio” stenciled on it. He brought out the other toys one by one. 

Gwyn ap Nudd gasped and Mallt-y-Nos whined eagerly. Gwyn took off his ermine gloves and both of them minutely examined the toys, Gwyn touching them and Mallt-y-Nos sniffing at them. 

Shadow watched and waited, more curious about this than he’d been about anything for a long time.

“For many years we have been drawn to this place,” said Gwyn. “On the Wild Hunt, we ride to find and free trapped souls, to lead them to Annwn, or whatever Otherworld is their final resting place. And to find their murderers, if we can.” 

Mallt-y-Nos whined. 

“Trapped souls? Murderers?” asked Shadow.

“There is death magic in this place,” said Gwyn. “We can sense trapped souls powering the spells, but we have never been able to find them.” 

He indicated the toys sitting on the table before him. One of them was a bisque Kewpie doll, remarkably well preserved given its age and composition. “These toys belonged to some of the children we seek. We hope we may attract their souls with them.”

“Children?” asked Shadow.

“The trapped souls. All were children when they died. Children’s souls have the strongest magic in them.”

Mallt-y-Nos made a soft sound, putting her great paw on one of the toys, a five-inch-tall soldier holding a massive typewriter on his lap. 

“Their numbers grow,” said Gwyn. “Another death each year.” 

Shadow shuddered. He wasn’t sure why, but he remembered his dream then. The one he had had his first night in Lakeside, the night he was so dreadfully cold, before he’d learned about space heaters and covering his windows with plastic. The one with the child, raised alone in the dark, and finally slaughtered, its blood a kind of gruesome sacrifice. 

He felt that cold again, seeping into his very bones. He felt airless, and trapped, and alone. He heard cracking, and the dripping of water. 

He felt a cold touch against his cheek, and he startled, realizing he’d slipped into a waking dream. His eyes flew open and he looked into the face of Gwyn. The black ash was caked in deep crevices on his face, framed by the masses of yellow curls, putting Shadow in mind of the head of a sunflower. His strangely shaped red eyes seemed to hold sympathy.

“I know now that you are a true King,” Gwyn said. “A true King always suffers with his subjects.“ 

Shadow didn’t know what to say in response. “What does the death magic spell do?” he asked.

“We do not know. Look for something that makes this place different from those around it.”

“It’s a _good_ town,” he remembered several residents saying. He can’t begin to imagine what could make it different. It was exactly as a town should be — almost aggressively so. 

Shadow shrugged. “I think I haven’t been here long enough to know that yet.” 

They sat in silence for a time.

“Say, do you hang out with any other gods?” asked Shadow. “Odin, for example?” 

Mallt-y-Nos made a low sound. It was almost too faint for Shadow to hear, but he thought it might have been a growl.

Gwyn frowned. “Odin is a distant relative,” he said. “Once upon a time, we visited the battlefields together, both reaping the souls of dead warriors — he with his ravens and spear, I with my hounds and bow. We were feared by those who saw us, for we were harbingers of war. But we have not crossed paths for a long time. He rides different hunting-grounds now. Do you know him?”

 _Harbingers of war,_ Shadow thought. “He employs me for odd jobs, sometimes,” he told them.

Maltt-y-Nos nudged Gwyn’s arm with her nose. She looked at Shadow and then back at Gwyn. Something in Gwyn’s expression changed, became speculative. Shadow began to suspect that admitting he worked for Odin caused Gwyn to see him differently, but he couldn’t tell what the stag man was thinking. 

The bright moon, on its westward journey, began to pour light through Shadow’s window. The plastic covering distorted its shape.

“We must continue our hunt,” said Gwyn.

Shadow started putting the gifts back in the bucket, but Gwyn stopped him and handed him a large leather bag. He filled it with the remaining frozen steaks, the oats, and the toys (he kept the cinnamon sticks and the chocolate orange). Mallt-y-Nos took the strap of the bag in her great jaws. 

“Good hunting,” Shadow said. “I hope you lead the trapped souls home and bring justice to their killers.”

“Thank you for the hospitality and conversation,” said Gwyn. “They will not be forgotten.” Gwyn gave Shadow his hand. It was as cold as a February frost. “I have, occasionally, a gift of prescience,” he continued. “If you wish it, I would give you what I’ve seen this night. It may be a true seeing, but the visions are sometimes distorted.”

“Yes, go ahead,” said Shadow.

An image crowded into Shadow’s mind. He immediately thought of zombie movies. A decaying corpse of a woman was impaled on the haft of a spear. Behind her stood a man with orange-yellow hair, wearing a Burberry. His face became a mask of surprise and pain when the woman began to move, gruesomely. She curled around the spear haft and pushed _backward_ with inhuman strength, until the spear point penetrated his chest. They writhed and struggled, as if in the throes of an obscene, deadly sex act.

Finally they toppled onto the ground, and Shadow saw the face of the corpse.

It was his dead wife, Laura. 

The visions left Shadow then, and he braced himself on the table with his arms, panting with fear, disgust, and unwanted memories. 

He felt a wetness against his forearm, and then the weight of a long muzzle against his thigh. Intelligent, undoglike eyes looked up at him. 

Gwyn’s frost-cold hand touched his. 

“I am sorry,” he said. “I cannot tell ahead of time whether the visions will be painful.”

“No worries,” said Shadow, locking the feelings inside himself, to contemplate later, when he wasn’t playing host to gods. 

“Your journeys will not be easy, I fear, but perhaps they will lead you to wisdom.”

“I hope so,” returned Shadow.

Then the stag man and the huge hound were gone. 

~~~

Shadow washed up his dinner things and the bowl from which Maltt-y-Nos had lapped the blood-like dregs of the wassail. He sucked on another slice of the chocolate orange, and picked up the _Encyclopedia of Myths and Superstitions_ again, letting it fall open at random.

> **Tylwyth Teg. Mythological Significance:** The Tylwyth Teg, or the Mother’s Blessing, are the fairy folk of Wales. They have golden hair and are often associated with children. 
> 
> Sometimes they act as escorts to the dead, carrying souls to Annwn, the Underworld.
> 
> **Superstitions:** They are repelled by metal. Therefore, to hide something from them, put it in a metal container.

He closed the book again.

_That must be why they didn’t want the bucket, _Shadow thought to himself.__

__He heard the sounds of horses and the baying of hounds and the cries of a man and a woman. He couldn’t resist the temptation to open his door for a moment and look. As he expected, he saw nothing but the lake ice and the old klunker. Well, that was fine. He’d had enough supernatural experiences for one night._ _

____

Shadow was running a cloth across the little table, absently, when he heard a clattering noise. Had he knocked something off the table? But he’d swear it had been empty five minutes ago. 

Something small and red was under the table. He bent to pick it up. 

It was a keychain in the shape of a dog, red, imprinted with Lakeside Animal Shelter. Some words were engraved underneath: “Alison McGovern, Jack of All Trades Award.”

Did it fall out of the bucket?

Shadow remembered the girls on the bus. Shy Alison, with the braces and rubber bands on her teeth. Missing.

He remembered the words of Gwyn: “Another death each year.”

Shadow shoved the keychain into his jeans pocket. His fists clenched so hard, his fingernails drew blood from his palms. 

_Something mattered to him now._

**Author's Note:**

> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwyn_ap_Nudd>: In folklore he is a warrior, a psychopomp, master of the Wild Hunt, ruler of Annwn (the world of the dead), and a king of the Tylwyth Teg; he combines several of these roles in this story.


End file.
